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1984 (Movie Thoughts: NY84)

Just the title alone excited me. I arrived in New York in 1984, so I felt like it was speaking to me. But ‘NY84’ is a little off from my experience, as it tells the story of three artists (Kate, Anton, Keith) during the 1980s bohemian scene – it might even have been trying to emulate Smith/Mapplethorpe. My problem with this movie is that although it shows the hedonism of the time, we really do not get any of the character’s back stories so we could properly care for them. So when these people got infected by ‘the plague,’ try as we might we don’t feel anything. Plus, I never got really a sense of the 1980 nor 1984 setting, the film looks like it was just filmed yesterday, and the 80s fashion looked more 90s to me. So as much as I wanted to like this film – for sentimental reasons – I was unmoved by all of it.